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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23965864">Requiem</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaos_Greymistchild/pseuds/Chaos_Greymistchild'>Chaos_Greymistchild</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dragon Age: Inquisition, 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Ghosts, Good Kid Lán Yuàn | Lán Sīzhuī, Inquiry (the guqin piece), Quiet Tragedy, idk what to tag</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 16:34:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>667</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23965864</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chaos_Greymistchild/pseuds/Chaos_Greymistchild</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time, Shizui plays <em>Inquiry</em> for himself only.</p><p>The second time, he plays to an audience grown both smaller and larger.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>27</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Requiem</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/catterypeeler/gifts">catterypeeler</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thank you, Nina, for inspiring this piece with all that worldbuilding craze! I had such fun writing this.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first time, Shizui plays <em>Inquiry</em> for himself only.</p><p><em>What is your name?</em> he asks the spirits who float around the inn, attached to the people they love and died for.</p><p>They whisper their names in answer in an incomparable chill across his skin.</p><p>
  <em>Would you like me to tell them something?</em>
</p><p><em>Of course</em> echoes like ghostly - ha - chimes that is audible even to the non-cultivators.</p><p>He plays <em>hello</em> and <em>goodbye</em> and the loudest <em>thank you</em>.</p><p>"She wants you to move on," he tells the first, "He wishes you to keep his sword sharp and ready," he tells the second, "They want you to know they loved you," the third, "The sound of your voice makes them feel like they could touch heaven," the fourth. And on and on and on, until the voices of that battlefield are quieted and his fingers ache bone deep.</p><p>The second time, he plays to an audience grown both smaller and larger.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>And the Inquisition marches on.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The breeze tastes like ashes and smells like funeral incense and the boy of barely 15 winters breathes deeply of the air that marked his youngest years. A heavy instrument of ironwood core and steel strings is carried as a shield across his back, and a slim sword more a nobleman’s ornamental than a soldier’s blade graces his waist.</p><p><em>He can tell you their last words</em>, is a rumour that floats through the towns the Inquisition passes through.</p><p>The townspeople queue in endless lines and listen to the music he plays. The young bard, who plays until his fingers are bleeding, and carrying the voices of the dead in his song.</p><p>His voice is soft as songbirds, sorrowful and sweet as he relates the last words of a loved to a crowd of grieving.</p><p>Bent over his music, the boy-bard recounts experiences once long lost to time, tells of undivulged heartbreak, gives voice to last wills and testaments, confesses to a hundred crimes executed by others.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>And the Inquisition marches on.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>“Can you tell me of their last wishes?” someone asks the musician with the voice of the dead.</p><p>He agrees, and plucks the strings of his strange instrument. <em>It was a focus, for talking with the dead</em>, the rumours murmured, <em>it holds the souls of the departed he talks to,</em> the rumours whispered,<em> it has lyrium embedded in it, that’s why its so heavy and only he can carry it</em>, the rumours muttered.</p><p>He only plays his music and speaks the answers in a voice soft and soothing.</p><p>And it is enough.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>And the Inquisition marches on.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The fingers of the player of the instrument that communes with the departed are blooded by the steel strings, and it is only then that Solas approaches, coward that he is.</p><p>“Can you reach into the Fade?” he asks, and the child who would converse with the spirits hesitates.</p><p>“Perhaps,” he says. “My fathers could. Both of them,” he says.</p><p>“My dead are spirits in the Fade. Can you reach them?” Solas asks, though he knows it to be selfish to ask the one bleeding through his thin-by-necessity bandages.</p><p>“I can try,” he says, and something of his frame, thinned by hunger despite his assertions he has no need for consumption, something of his energies speaks of determination enough to die for.</p><p>And the boy-musician of barely 15 winters who breathes in the ash and incense so reminiscent of his earliest memories with a noble’s bearing and a soldier’s shield and who speaks out with the voice of the dead plucks the strings of his instrument in the longest, most complex song they have heard.</p><p>He bleeds through his bandages, then cuts them to ribbons, then slices his flesh to the bone on the steel strings and does not stop. He plays and plays and plays, to dizzying heights of crimson beauty and to impossible depths of layered sound. Melody and harmony blend together, indistinguishable.</p><p>And he reaches into the Fade.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>And the Inquisition marches on.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>You can find me on <a href="https://twitter.com/greymistchild">twitter</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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